


It's Christmastime, there's no need to be afraid

by BuildingGsr



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28149333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuildingGsr/pseuds/BuildingGsr
Summary: Title from:“Do they know it's Christmas time” by Band AidInspiration:Episode 4x17 “XX” |Sara: Entomology textbook. Grissom gave it to me last Christmas. When I can't sleep, I read.Time:A year before that episode. That Christmas.Synopsis:Christmas day. Sara goes to work, Grissom goes to have Christmas lunch with his mother. Quinn Howard, from Day Shift, comes across. And also a book and some cake.
Relationships: Gil Grissom/Sara Sidle
Kudos: 6





	It's Christmastime, there's no need to be afraid

**Author's Note:**

> First publication: January 25, 2012  
>  Latest edit: December 17, 2020
> 
> I wrote this in 2012, so it's a bit raw and...terse, maybe? But, hey, it was almost ten years ago: my writing skills were not much experienced. Don't judge it too severely, please. I recently proofread its English translation again, to make it more legible and understandable...and also to correct the many typos that were in it! :)

Like all other previous years, Sara showed up at the lab on Christmas day. It had become a habit, since the first year she arrived in Las Vegas: everybody knew it and asked no questions about it.

Passing the reception desk at the entrance, she greeted Alene, Judi's replacement, and walked toward the locker room to get changed and take her seat in the meeting room, where she would wait for the first assignment. On her way, she walked in front of Grissom's office and the distracted glance she threw in revealed something unexpected. So she walked back on her feet and, standing by the office door, she gave a closer look inside. She found the first glance had not deceived her: the strange thing was that Grissom was still in his office. Sara instinctively glanced at her watch: it was 10 am and a half and, if he didn't want to be late, he had better hurry up and get out, to go get ready. Since the first year, in fact, she knew that Christmas day was the only day Grissom granted in whole – or most of it – to her mother: with her he would share lunch and the afternoon hours. But that day he was still sitting and relaxed at his desk, reading what appeared to draw his full attention.

"If you don't hurry, you'll be late..." she said, after leaning against the door frame.

Grissom took a few seconds to raise his head.

"Sara..." he murmured, looking dazed.

By reworking what she had said, his mind slowly returned to reality and when he looked at his watch he realized that she was right. He took a deep breath and decided to leave the office as admitting he lost track of time.

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Sara joked, while watching him collecting some parcels from the desk and earning an amused glance from Grissom.

Together they headed for the locker room.

"What about you?" Grissom asked after a few steps. "You'll spend Christmas day here, as usual?"

Sara nodded with a sigh and a smile.

"At least on Christmas, you could take the day off..." he good-naturedly reprimanded her. "Sooner or later I'll have to find a way to make you stay home," he added with a hint of irony.

Sara smiled at his joke and said that she was fine and had no problem to spend Christmas day at work.

"If I'm not mistaken, you have a brother, right...?" Grissom said, asking her – or, at least, trying to figure out without delving into a too personal discussion – why she didn't want to spend Christmas with her family.

"Well...let's say that...I can handle the family practice with a phone call," she replied, rather abruptly and absent-mindedly, showing no intention to further fathom that topic.

Grissom nodded, thinking for a moment about what such an answer could mean; he replied nothing, though, sensing that, at least for the moment, he had to settle for that answer. Only when they entered the locker room, Sara admitted that Christmas didn't suit her.  
"Now it's become only a speculation festivity," she said as opening her locker, "a time when shopkeepers look at you and lick their chops, wondering how to make you spend as much money as possible, playing on the fact that it's Christmas time."

The way she spoke shone disappointment, but regret too. Notwithstanding, Grissom couldn't help but smile, for her attitude of not being cool with anything, always finding something to argue on.

"Christmas should be a holiday drawing deep values such as kindness, generosity, altruism..." he reasoned aloud, trying to figure out if that was what Sara intended.

"Exactly," she agreed. "I don't want to feed a purely commercial market. This is why I'd rather be here and help out who's less lucky than I am," she explained, adding, with a kind of pedantic irony, that this was in full agreement with the feeling of the Christmas.

Grissom had the impression that this made her feel relieved, as if the actual reasons why she didn't like Christmas were others, more hidden and deeper ones. However, having noticed her earlier answer with which she made clear she wasn't pleased to talk about her family, he tried to lighten the mood a little.

"So, if I, just like today. have a nice lunch and buy some presents...I'm feeding a purely commercial market?" he asked, curious and amused, just to tease her.

Sara pondered his question for a moment looking up in the air and then she lowered her gaze on the buckle of her pants, to see where she was pinning the identification tag.

"I believe you spending some time with your mother can be safely put into the category of charitable jobs," she finally answered. "In full agreement with the spirit of Christmas," she added with a half smile.

Grissom accepted her answer for it, and for a moment he stared at her with that strange conspiratorial gaze that Sara had the impression he flaunted only with her. None of them added anything else and Sara silently finished preparing to start working and Grissom finished getting ready to leave. Sara was the first one to leave the room: she wished Grissom a Merry Christmas with a little smile and without giving him the time to return an adequate response, she disappeared into the hallway.

After a few minutes also Grissom left the room and as walking by the meeting room, on his way to the exit, he saw Sara sat on one of the chairs around the central table in the meeting room studying what appeared to be a report.

He stood staring at her for a moment, feeling undecided. He would have wanted to say something nice or kind to sweeten the bitterness with which he had the impression she decided to spend Christmas at the lab: the brief exchange of views on Christmas and the way she had covertly sharply truncated the topic _family_ had corroborated his thought. Something was amiss in that girl, something that clashed with the sweetness she was able express, something that made her introverted and, at times, dull. Grissom knew he was not very knowledgeable about human soul, but he presumed to recognize when something had left a mark into somebody's life. Maybe he wasn't able to express it in words, or to find words of comfort, fine, but he could recognize the symptoms. In a sense, he was himself a victim of that: the loss of his father when he was just a child and the illness of his mother, the silence and the rigor in which he had been raised by her, had affected his personality, making him grow in a shell from which rarely – and sometimes badly – managed to get out. He would have wanted to say something to Sara...anything... but he knew he was not able to.  
Once it would have been easier. When she was still in San Francisco, after they met and become friends, they had heard each other several times by phone, they exchanged emails and text messages: she, with that curious way of dealing with life, had succeeded in getting into his good books, and he had come to consider her one of the few people he could trust. But something had changed in their relationship when she arrived in Vegas and the cause of that change, he knew it, was just him. He didn't know what to do, that was the reason: with her, he didn't know how to behave. That, also, was the answer he gave some time before, when she offered him a dinner out together to see _what would have happened_ : they both knew that there was a hint of something more between them and that dinner could be a good opportunity to test this "something more". This was what Sara had wanted him to understand with that invitation. But he pulled back.

And just like then, even now he knew he would pull back, not being able to tell her anything.

So he did and headed down the hallway to the exit, only accompanied by his thoughts and his shadow. He went home, took a shower and got dressed to the nines. An hour after he left the office, he arrived at his mother's house, who didn't failed to make him kindly notice his delay. He apologized, handing her the flowers he had bought for her along the way, and soon after they began to eat.

The case Sara had started working on when she arrived at the lab had kept her busy throughout the morning: she always gave a hundred percent at work and the same did on that Christmas morning. Inspection of the scene, collecting evidence and photos; and then, back to the lab, analysis and conjectures.

Only around 3 pm she found the time and the desire to stop, eat and refuel. She ordered something at the closest take-away restaurant and once she got her lunch, she began to eat it in the meeting room, accompanying her lunch with the reading of Shakespeare's greatest works she had brought from home. Ten minutes had passed when someone interrupted her break.

"Sidle..."

Hearing herself called by a unknown voice, Sara looked up from the book listlessly and watched the guy who had briskly entered the room.

"Sara...right?" he pointed out, stopping in the middle of the room and looking at her with friendly air.

"Yeah..." she hesitantly replied while studying the guy, who was filling a mug with some of the bad coffee available at the lab.

By watching him, she realized that he was familiar to her, but she wasn't able to place him in a context: tall, wavy dark brown hair with copper hues, black eyes framed by thick-rimmed glasses. She stared at him even after he turned to her and started passing his calm gaze from her to the book on the table and then to the containers of take-away food. 

"Howard," he reminded her his own surname, realizing that it was not clear to her who he was. "Quinn Howard."

"Quinn Howard, right," she repeated, finally succeeding to place the guy and feeling momentarily embarrassed for the fact that he knew her name, while she did not remember his. Therefore she tried to improve her situation, adding one of the few information she knew about him. "Day shift," she said, condescending.

She watched him a little longer, as he sipped his coffee. Then, with a polite smile, she lowered her eyes on her book, serene of having done her duty of good colleague.

"You were here last year as well, right?" Quinn said, perhaps encouraged by the smile, perhaps trying to approach. 

"I'm here all the year," Sara replied, raising her gaze from the book, still pretending courtesy, and lowering it soon after.

"I meant on Christmas day," Quinn pointed out, with an amused smile.

At his clarification she raised her head again. 

"Oh, yes," she said. Afraid he could begin with a series of questions, she added, "And, surprise, I was here on Christmas day two years ago too, and the year before that as well."

She hoped that by cutting all the ties to a useless talk, the guy would have lost hope, leaving her read and eat in peace. 

"Oh, I know," Quinn instead admitted with a hint of pride.

He remained silent for a moment and Sara thought her attempt was successful, but then he made an observation that, in addition to drown Sara's hopes to be left alone, changed her mood considerably.

"You're not Grissom's favourite CSI, huh?" he said.

Hearing this last observation, Sara couldn't help but raise her head, suddenly watching Quinn with irritation, not understanding why he thought such a thing.

"Excuse me, but...why do you say that?" she coldly asked.

"Well...I spend Christmas here every year as well, and I thought that you spend it here for the same reason."

"And this reason is...?"

"I always do something that angers the boss," he admitted with a shrug and a wry smile, as if to underline his consideration for his superiors' intelligence. "And they make it up on me by forcing me to spend Christmas day at work."

"Grissom has nothing to do with this," she stopped him. "It's my decision," she stated, annoyed.

She knew that her relationship with Grissom was not the best one, especially after she had ventured to invite him out to dinner, but one thing was that the problem was managed by the two of them, another one was that a stranger talked and did insinuations about it.

"Your decision?" Quinn exclaimed with surprise, leaving the question opened, wondering about the possible reasons that could lead a young and rather pretty girl like the one before him to decide to spend Christmas day at work. "Don't you have a boyfriend? A Prince Charming you would like to spend this day with, instead of staying here at work?" he asked her alluringly.

Sara began to grow impatient.

"I think this is not your business," she dryly replied.

She gave his a surly look and then she lowered the eyes on her book, hoping that the guy desisted, leaving her alone. Quinn remained silent for a while, then leaned against the edge of the table across from Sara. 

"Your family sucks...uh?" he finally said, in a tone that tried to be suddenly confidential.

Sara rolled her eyes, now very annoyed and shocked by such a statement. Who was this guy, came out of nowhere, slamming all her miseries at her face? He seemed to be enjoying rubbing it in. With this last question he had definitely became _irritating_ and Sara realized she wanted to get rid of him once for all. To get up and leave, though, would have been a sign of weakness and, now that she felt annoyed enough, the thing she wanted the most in the world was he leaving with his tail between his legs.

"My family would certainly be much more proud to have a daughter like me, than of a son like you, who seems to have more close to his heart his own personal revenge than his family," she said scornfully.

Quinn seemed to be touched by Sara's affirmation.

"Damn!" he exclaimed in surprise, although with an amused smile. "You play it hard...!" he commented, looking at her for a moment almost admiring her tenacity.

Sara looked at him, waiting for him to turn his heels and leave.

“Why don't we spend one of these Christmases together?" he instead surprisingly offered.

Sara was shocked: it was really so long that she had not to do with men that she did not even remember how to make them go away? Ironically, she thought that was the only thing she was able to do! With that pungent observation she hoped to hit and sink him; instead, there he was, getting back to the track.

"Maybe I could try to be good and not make my boss mend the Christmas day for me and you could decide not to work on this day."

As he was speaking, Quinn walked around the table, leaned against it next to Sara and looked down at her. Suddenly, moreover, the tone of his voice had become calm and quiet, almost shy, differently from the tone a bit cocky that he had kept in the discussion until that moment.

"What a great idea! Why I didn't think of that!" Sara exclaimed, closing the book and pretending enthusiasm.

"We are two hotheads...maybe we can get along," Quinn added, trying to convince her.

"I'm not a hothead," Sara said in a firm voice.

She looked at him for a moment perplexed: he was serious or was just trying to make fun of her? The fact that her moves hadn't achieved the expected results confused her, and the fact of not being able to understand the game of the guy, and his insistence, made her uneasy. Despite she flaunted coldness, in fact, she started to feel flattered by the attention of a man she had seen, since her arriving in Las Vegas, about thirty times in passing.

"However we have a whole year ahead of us to get to know each other better," Quinn added, with an inviting and satisfied air, as if he knew he had the girl in the palm of his hand.

Sara's last experience with a man had been with Hank, and it was not a good memory at all nor something that gave her the confidence to tackle a similar experience.

"A whole year..." she repeated, "of course...yeah!" she added with an ironic laugh, opening her book again and trying to get back concentrating on her reading.

The memory of Hank had immediately dispelled the sense of adulation she had for an instant felt a few moments before.

"Then two years, maybe...?" Quinn insisted.

Sara looked up and Quinn could see her challenging look, vanished from Sara's eyes for a few moments, show up again. For a moment he seemed to give up, but then, against Sara's expectations, he relaunched.

"Okay, then. Let's do like the movie," he said with a confident smile. Sara frowned, curious to know what that strange guy had in mind. "If over the next three years nothing has changed, we will spend Christmas day together," he explained with a determination that left no room for changes in plans.

Sara shook her head, more amused that lured at the idea.

"Quinn, although sometimes Las Vegas makes you to think you're in a movie," she said as lowering her gaze again and talking with wistful voice, emphasizing his name in an ironic way, "in life, things go a little differently..."

"Maybe not," Quinn replied.

By looking up, Sara saw that Quinn looked at her with sympathy and kindness, and seemed less bold than he wanted to show. They stared each other for a few seconds and she didn't know how to respond. He was the one who looked away, shrugging and drinking another sip of coffee while glancing at the book that Sara kept open leaned against the edge of the table. 

Then a movement behind Sara, near the entrance of the room caught his attention and the expression on his face changed. 

"Here is the boss," he said, quickly getting up from the table. "I'll better go back to work..." he added, walking towards the door followed by Sara's dumbfounded look.

It was only when Quinn arrived at the threshold that Sara knew who the boss he was referring to was. Grissom, in fact, was standing at the entrance, looking at the guy with curious, almost worried, eyes. To make her look bounce from Grissom to Quinn, and moving it back on Grissom, confirmed her what she had just said to Quinn: _in life things go a bit differently._ She suddenly felt sad. Although Grissom was much more mature than Quinn, and perhaps even less physically handsome, Sara realized that it would be really unlikely that anyone could ever get over the charm Grissom exerted on her. That made her feel a basket case.

"Anyway..." Quinn hinted after throwing an inquiring glance to Grissom and drawing Sara's attention on himself, "think about it, ok?" he said, suggesting to the intruder Grissom that they had talked about something he didn't want him to know.

"Sure..." Sara replied, posing her eyes for a moment on Grissom, who now looked at both of them perplexed. "Count on it..." she ironically added in a little higher voice as Quinn was walking away. 

She watched him until he disappeared around the corner; then she glanced at Grissom who was still standing in the doorway. 

"Grissom," she called him to surprise, glancing at the clock. "What are you doing here already?"

Although he had a compelling and strange desire to ask her who that guy was and what she had to think about, Grissom considered inappropriate to do so. So he entered the room, explaining that his mother had fallen asleep on the sofa after lunch, and knowing she was a heavy sleeper and would have slept the whole afternoon, he had thought to come to work.

"You could take the opportunity to have some rest, too," Sara lovingly said as closing down the book and sliding it toward the center of the table. "If I'm not mistaken you went directly to her from here," she pointed out, taking up that little food, now cold, left to eat in the take-away containers.

Grissom leaned on the table the package wrapped in silver paper he was holding and took off his coat. He shrugged.

"I'm fine...thanks," he friendly said, sitting across from her.

"You left her alone on Christmas Day," Sara objected, leaning back on the chair and swinging, trying to do what she enjoyed the most: try to put him in trouble.

"I left her a note," he nonchalantly made her know.

Sara frowned and held back a laughter, not understanding how he could think that was the best thing to do. Noticing the puzzled expression on Sara's face, Grissom realized that perhaps he could have done differently, and felt a bit guilty; so he decided to move the discussion on other issues, on which perhaps could be more at his ease.

"What's this?" he asked, drawing the thick book that Sara had left on the table near to him. "Shakespeare?" he asked surprised and intrigued.

"Yes..." Sara said with a hint of pride.

"I didn't know you read Shakespeare," he argued, opening the book and beginning to leaf through it.

Sara noticed the keen interest with which Grissom flipped through the volume and this gave her satisfaction.

"You always quote him," she explained in a funny way, "I thought it was part of the training program."

Grissom raised a quizzical, but amused look at Sara's explanation.

"It's a beautiful tome," he observed, engrossed in examining the index of the book.

"It's an opera omnia," Sara cared to stress, renewing the interest with which Grissom ran the index.

He closed the book and looked at it with admiration, as he slid it toward the center of the table again.

"It's a good book," he finally said.

"It looks like you have never seen one like that before," Sara said, intrigued by the greed with which Grissom watched the book.

"I've already seen some of these," he smiled, "but at home I only have a few works, not an opera omnia like this," he admitted, almost embarrassed, as if he felt guilty about it.

Sara remained silent for a moment, moving her look from Grissom to the book. She finally brought the gaze back on Grissom again.

"You want it?" she asked, putting pressure on the seatback and rocking a bit in her chair, a little awkwardly.

Grissom was surprised by the proposal and looked the book, admitting to himself that in fact he would have liked to have a tome like that at home: it would be a real source of inspiration always at hand. But then he looked up at Sara, he thanked her, but refused her offer. She stared at him, as if asking if he was really sure to refuse a gift like that. Grissom sighed and after a moment of indecision, he admitted that he would have liked to have it, but she didn't have to worry: at most it would have bought one himself.

"Take it, I give it you," Sara said then, leaving no room for hesitations, pushing the volume toward him. "After all, today is Christmas..." she added, in a friendly way.

For a moment Grissom had no answer to such assurance.

"You would make a a better use of it than me for sure," she observed, noticing Grissom's uncertainty in accepting the gift.

He smiled, pleased, but he wanted to argue. "What about the speech about Christmas as a feast of speculation and a purely commercial market you gave this morning?" he asked slyly, trying to rise from the embarrassment of receiving a gift: it was not customary for him to receive Christmas gifts from colleagues, even less from Sara.

She smiled at his question and grimaced, not appreciating that Grissom played her own words against her.

"Well...I haven't bought this book for Christmas...so it does not fall within the Christmas speculative market."

Grissom knew he had no choice and he had to accept the gift she so kindly offered him. But he felt embarrassed to receive a gift, without being able to give one in return. He quickly reasoned about how he could reciprocate and he remembered a book he held with great affection in his office. So, muttering to Sara _wait a minute_ , he got up and left the room. He reached his office, took the book he had in mind and returned to the meeting room.

"Here..." he said, handing it to Sara after sitting.

She took the book in her hands and looked at the cover.

"Entomology textbook?" she asked, puzzled.

Grissom nodded with satisfaction.

"It's the habit of Christmas to exchange gifts...right?" he explained, pretending that their exchange of gifts was something normal. "And since that you've been kind enough to give me one, I think is at least gallant of me to reciprocate... "

In front of the uncertainty with which Sara flipped through the book, Grissom wanted to add that the book was less boring than it seemed. She smiled at that in a friendly way, failing however to hide her not being sure about it.

"At most, I have finally found a way to make you have some sleep..." Grissom finally said, still trying to find a good reason to receive an entomology textbook as a gift.

Sara's smile grew a little wider at Grissom's joke, but at the end she finally thanked him for the thought.

"You didn't have to" she said.

"It's a pleasure," he said, with a small smile.There was an awkward moment then, during which they both leafed the gifts just received, feeling a bit of pride in thinking to have their hands on something that had belonged to the other. It was, theirs, a really strange way of communicating, they reflected: a subtle mixture of emotions that, when it reached its equilibrium, seemed to make everything more beautiful.

After a few minutes, then, Sara said her break had lasted way too much. So she rearranged the table and got up to throw the empty containers of her lunch.

"It's not exactly what one expect when thinking of a Christmas lunch..." Grissom pointed out as looking at the plastic containers falling into the waste basket.

After throwing them, Sara looked at him frowning: why everybody seemed to remember her miseries to her that day?  


Grissom noticed Sara's expression and apologized for his unhappy remark.

"Maybe this can make the lunch a bit...uh, warmer," he said as starting to unwrap the package of tinfoil he had left on the table upon arriving.

Sara realized she had paid little attention to it and, as she sat down, she watched in silence Grissom finishing to unwrap it. When opened, the silver paper revealed a couple of slices of cake.

"Cake?" she asked in surprise, raising a quizzical look on Grissom.

He nodded. "I thought your lunch may not have been the best here in the lab, so I thought to bring you at least some cake," he explained, gently showing concern for her.

The look with which Sara watched Grissom became even more puzzled: since when Grissom brought slices of cake at the lab for his colleagues? she wondered.

His behaviour confused her, even more than Quinn's behaviour.

"Try it," Grissom urged her, pushing the cake on silver paper closer to Sara while trying not to think how strange all that thing was: since when he brought slices of cake at the lab for his colleagues?

The meeting they had that morning had moved and worried him about the real state of Sara's mind: it never happened before, in fact, that they met on Christmas morning. Generally everybody ended the shift at dawn and then they all greeted, taking refuge in a little rest in order to manage the Christmas lunch with due serenity: Catherine with her mother and daughter, Nick flew to his family, Warrick with the guys of the community and Grissom with his mother. It had become such a habit that Sara worked at Christmas that no one paid any attention to it anymore. But to meet her that morning and the chat they had, had made him think: he realized that he knew so little about her, except that she had a character sometimes hard - the result, he thought, of something not quite clear, but which, he knew, would have come the time to investigate on and clarify.

Because of this, knowing that he was going back to the lab before leaving his mother's house he thought it would be nice for Sara to eat some cake on Christmas Day.

After a moment of hesitation, Sara uncertainly took one of the two slices, gave it a bite and she chewed thoughtfully, focusing on the different flavors that discovered: cinnamon was the first ingredient she recognized, helped by its spicy scent; then came a hint of anise and the dried fruit cracked between her teeth; apples and candied orange peel softened everything, perfectly amalgamating with the taste not too sweet of the dough.

Grissom looked at her in silence, waiting for the verdict. Sara swallowed the first bite and, before taking the second, she said it was really delicious. That illuminated the face of her supervisor.

"I didn't know your mother made such good desserts..." she added with the second bite in her mouth. "You should tell her to restock the machine, here at the lab."

"We have been passing the recipe for this cake down for generations, in my family," Grissom said. He hesitated a moment before continuing. "This year, my mother wanted me to test with it too," he admitted, with a hint of embarrassment, "to...you know, to ensure that the tradition continues," he added.

At his admission, Sara immediately stopped chewing and looked very surprised.

"You...? You mean that...you made it?" she asked, blinking shocked and instinctively lowering her look to the slice of cake in her hand.

"I did," he confirmed and his embarrassment became more evident.

On Sara's face, instead, widened an amused smile which Grissom didn't understand right away.

"So it's not true that your mom fell asleep on the couch..." she said, enigmatically. Grissom frowned not understanding what she meant. "You poisoned her!" she exclaimed, hinting a laughter. "And now you're trying to poison me too, to recover your entomology textbook!" she continued even more amused by her own joke.

"I didn't know that I would have given the book to you, when I made the cake," he seriously said, turned a bit sulky by Sara's joke, and showing his inability in dealing with jokes related to himself.

"It's really good..." Sara reassured him then, looking at him amused.

He thanked her with a nod, satisfied, and looked her eating the cake. As watching him, Sara saw that his eyes were strangely quiet and friendly. Just a few seconds and then she looked away, for fear that her feelings for him became too obvious in a situation like that: the fact that it was Christmas Day, that he had made a cake and had thought to bring her a few slices made her mind wandering towards shores where it was dangerous for her to venture. Thus she ended eating the cake with no further comment, but certainly with more delight than when she started. When she finished, she remained undecided for a moment, looking at the second slice of cake that was left on the table.

"Don't you eat that?" she asked Grissom.

"I've already had enough of it, thank you," he replied, bringing back the torso and leaning it back against the seatback. "Besides, I brought it for you," he added quite awkwardly, knowing that a sentence like that could give rise to a number of conjectures.

"I'll keep it aside for tonight," she decided, hurrying to wrap the dessert with the silver paper, trying not to digress too much with the mind over the fact that he had thought to bring her that cake.

She was silent for a moment, then, watching him puzzled and thoughtful, failing for the umpteenth time since he she knew him to understand him, to really understand his soul and personality.

"Who are you?!" came out of her lips. "Now it turns out that you can even cook cakes?" she asked, acknowledging to herself that this new side, if possible, made Grissom's charm even more wider at her eyes.

He shrugged with a friendly smile.

"Who am I?" he repeated, resting his forearms on the edge of the table and suddenly taking on a mysterious expression. "What a question."

He left the answer unfinished, staring for a moment at Sara's look that became dazed by an answer like that.

"Bob Dylan," he explained. "In the movie _Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid._ "

Sara looked even more bewildered. "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid..." she repeated, shaking her head for his skillfulness to find a quote that fitted any situation. They remained silent again, then Sara thought it was appropriate to go back to work.

"About outlaws and sheriffs, Mr. Alias..." she said as standing up, "I think it is appropriate that I go back to work."

This time it was Grissom who was surprised by the fact that Sara knew the character in the movie who pronounced the line he had quoted.

"You know that movie?" he asked, standing up in turn, gathering his things and following her to the door with a sense of admiration. To his question, Sara stopped just before leaving the room.

"Well...maybe was right that guy, who once told me that one should never think to know somebody..." she said, recalling the words he had said to her several months earlier. 

Grissom did not recognize his own words, but he agreed with her. "Yeah...I think it that way as well..." he said, feeling the strange desire to know more about her, to know her more deeply, which he felt at various times when he was in her company and nobody was around.

"Need some help with the case?" he asked.

"Four eyes are better than two...right?" she said, serenely.

They walked down the hallway, towards a day of work together, which seemed to start with the most optimistic assumptions.  
None of them knew, nor barely suspected, that what had happened that year was only a preview of what would happen just a few years later, when they would spend the Christmas day together, like that year, but - more importantly - together emotionally.


End file.
